Ligonier Ministries has a video series of a Pilgrims Progress survey done by a great world renown scholar named Dr. Derek Thomas (a teacher at Reformed Theological Seminary). He has done his homework and this is a great opportunity that I know everyone will love. There is also a study guide that I will be handing out week by week that you can even fill out while you watch the video. The video is about 25 minutes every week and we can follow it by a short discussion on relevant topics as time permits.”

HeartCry Missionary Society wants to thank Pastor Jason Jesuroga for traveling and teaching the HeartCry Missionaries in Cambodia. Jason’s report is below, sharing the highlights of the trip and the blessing of the fellowship he expereinced with the Khmer pastors.

I just enjoyed the distinct privilege and pleasure of going to Cambodia through HeartCry Missionary Society to train local native pastors there for the work of the ministry. I am a Reformed Baptist pastor from a small church in Fort Worth, Texas, called Sovereign Joy Community Church.

My time there was nothing short of amazing for several reasons. First, I found myself personally challenged with forsaking the comforts of the United States for a third world country where there is much poverty and hardship. I was reminded of what the Lord Jesus did in leaving the status and privileges of heavenly glory and coming in likeness of a servant to save a people for His own glory (Phil 2:5–11). For me, this ministry required much dependence on God to get me through each and every day. It was difficult and taxing physically, mentally, and spiritually, but I found every teaching session very gratifying and thoroughly loved it.

Second, this time was amazing because the Cambodian Christians hunger to know the Bible. Their many questions kept me from going through all of the teaching material I brought, but the interaction was worthwhile. I taught for four hours each day. They would not let me stop before my time was up. God was doing a great work. Many times in the USA, people complain that the sermons are too long or require too much thinking. Nothing like that happened in Cambodia!

My two subjects were “An Introduction to the Pentateuch” and “The Doctrine of God.” In the first, I used a biblical-theological methodology to highlight the major themes of each book and how they all fit together with the rest of Scripture. My students said they enjoyed seeing the big picture as we traced the great promise of Genesis 3:15 through the Pentateuch. One of the things I stressed was that the purpose of the Scriptures is ultimately to point to Jesus Christ (Luke 24:27).

In the doctrine of God course, we discovered what God is like. Nothing is better than studying our great and glorious God! Buddhism is the prevalent religion in Cambodia, so it is very important for these pastors to have an accurate understanding of the nature and attributes of God.

The questions they raised were very relevant. An example is one pastor who asked me about meat that had been offered to idols, since his extended family often offers him such meat. He wondered about the best way to respond. I showed him 1 Corinthians 8 and we had a good discussion with all the men.

In conclusion, the men were very thankful for this ministry and the many answers to their questions. They were amazed that I could answer these questions using the Bible and asked how I gained so much knowledge. I thought about the many advantages we have in America. We should be thankful for them all, both spiritual and material.

Thankfully, they have a Bible in their native language of Khmer. Without this I could not have opened the Scriptures as I did and trained these men. I heard that the translator was an American missionary who produced a very accurate rendering by 1920. This was a great service to this people as now they have a Bible they can understand.

I would love to return to Cambodia and continue teaching these men, but I also know that if I get to go, the blessing will be all mine.

When you hear the words “church government,” what do you think? Members’ meetings? Elder board rooms? Fights over the budget or the color of the carpet? Too often it can seem that way.

Yet church government should involve so much more than that. In fact, it should tie into the everyday life of the church. And everyone has a role to play.

Did you know, ordinary church member, that Jesus has given you a job? Your elders have a special office, to be sure, but so do you. And Jesus has given you elders in order to train you to do your job.

So if Jesus’s discipleship program gives every single member a job, what responsibilities come with this job? There are at least seven.

1. Attend Church Regularly

You, as a baptized Christian and ordinary member of a church, are responsible to attend church regularly. Scripture could not be clearer about this fundamental responsibility so that you can give yourself to love and good works and encouragement.

And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. (Heb. 10:24–25)

The author threatens final judgment if you do not attend (vv. 26–27). The stakes are high indeed. After all, if you do not attend, you cannot fulfill the next six responsibilities. Attendance makes everything else possible.

2. Help Preserve the Gospel

You, as a baptized Christian and ordinary member of a church, are responsible for protecting and preserving the gospel and the gospel’s ministry in your church.

Think about Paul’s “amazement” in Galatians 1: “I am amazed that you are so quickly . . . turning to a different gospel” (v. 6). He upbraids not the pastors, but the members, and tells them to reject even apostles or angels who teach a false gospel.

What this means, Christian, is that you are responsible to study the gospel and know it. Can you summarize the gospel to me in 60 seconds or less? Can you explain the relationship between faith and works? Can a Christian live in unrepentant sin? Why or why not? Why is it important for a Christian to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity? What role do good deeds, fellowship, and hospitality play in promoting a church’s gospel ministry? Why should a church never let its identity and ministry be subverted by a political party?

These are the kinds of questions, Christian, that you are responsible to answer in order to help guard the gospel. I am not telling you to find answers independently of your elders. They should equip you to answer such questions. If they aren’t, you might not be in the best church.

Know the gospel, and what the gospel requires in the church’s and a Christian’s life.

3. Help Affirm Gospel Citizens

You, as a baptized Christian and ordinary member of a church, are responsible for protecting the gospel and the gospel’s ministry in your church by affirming and disaffirming gospel citizens.

In a matter of discipline Paul doesn’t address the Corinthian elders, but the Corinthian church itself (1 Cor. 5:1–13; 2 Cor. 2:6–8). Likewise, it is your responsibility, Christian, to receive and dismiss members. Jesus has given it to you. For you to neglect this work only cultivates complacency, nominalism, and eventually theological liberalism.

Of course, the job here is bigger than showing up at members’ meetings and voting on new members. It involves working to know and be known by your fellow members seven days a week. You cannot affirm and give oversight to a people you don’t know, not with integrity anyhow. That doesn’t mean you’re responsible to know personally every member of your church. We do this work collectively. But look for ways to start including more of your fellow members into the regular rhythm of your life. Paul offers a useful checklist for doing this:

Show family affection to one another with brotherly love. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lack diligence; be fervent in spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer. Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality. (Rom. 12:10–13)

How are you doing on this list?

4. Attend Members’ Meetings

So how do you preserve the gospel and affirm gospel citizens? By showing up consistently for members’ meetings.

Different churches make decisions in different ways, which is fine. But whatever venue your church uses for making the decisions concerning the gospel “what” (the purity of the gospel) and the gospel “who” (the people of the gospel), you should be there.

You cannot do your job if you don’t show up to the office.

Admittedly, members’ meetings have a bad rap. I understand. So many are unhealthy cauldrons of dispute and insurgency. But don’t let bad marriages cause you to give up on marriage. By God’s grace, I’ve been a part of several churches now where the members’ meetings feel like warm, encouraging, and engaging family gatherings. Part of that depends on the leadership of the pastors in those meetings and how they plan it. Part of that depends on you.

5. Disciple Other Church Members

You, as a baptized Christian and ordinary member of a church, are responsible for protecting the gospel and the gospel’s ministry in your church by discipling other church members.

Remember Ephesians 4:15–16. The church builds itself up in love as each part does its work. You have work to do to build up the church. And part of that includes the ministry of words. A few verses later, Paul says, “Speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another” (v. 25). Speak truth to them, and help them to grow. Our words should be “good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4:29). Also, make yourself available to be spoken to. Are you willing to listen?

Basic Christianity involves building up other believers. It is a part of fulfilling the Great Commission and making disciples. Speaking of . . .

6. Share the Gospel with Outsiders

If through union with the second Adam God has reinstated you as a priest-king, your whole life should reflect the gospel in word and deed. You are an ambassador. Paul’s charge and example is worth repeating here:

He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” (2 Cor. 5:19b–20)

Every Christian has been reconciled, and thus every Christian has received this message of reconciliation. Therefore, we plead and we pray for sinners to be reconciled to God.

This, too, is a part of your job. The command to “Go and make disciples” belongs to you (Matt. 28:19).

7. Follow Your Leaders

It’s the job of the pastors or elders to equip the saints for the work of ministry: for these previous six responsibilities (Eph. 4:12). If elders aren’t teaching the gospel, catechizing the church in the gospel, teaching them their responsibility for one another, then they’re ill-equipping the church for the job Jesus has given them.

Christian, this means that you’re responsible to avail yourself of the elders’ instruction and counsel. Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you’ve learned from them (2 Tim. 1:13). Follow their teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, love, and endurance, along with their persecutions and sufferings (2 Tim. 3:10–11).

Be the wise son or daughter in Proverbs who takes the path of wisdom, prosperity, and life by fearing the Lord and heeding instruction. It is better than jewels and gold.

Authority Brings Responsibility

The Bible gives final authority and therefore responsibility to the gathered congregation. With authority comes responsibility. By joining a church, you become responsible for what your church teaches and for every single member’s discipleship.

You are responsible to act if Pastor Ed begins to teach a false gospel.

You are responsible to help ensure Member Candidate Chris adequately understands the gospel.

You are responsible for Sister Sue’s discipleship to Christ, and that she’s being cared for and nurtured toward Christlikeness.

You are responsible to ensure Member Max is excluded from the fellowship of the church if his life and profession no longer agree.

Who trains you for all this work? Your elders. Add your responsibilities together with theirs and you have Jesus’s discipleship program.

More than 75 Minutes

When people come to join my church, they are asked to do an interview with an elder, where they are asked to share their testimony and to explain the gospel. At the conclusion of any interviews I personally conduct, assuming I’m going to recommend the person for membership to the whole congregation, I will say something like the following:

Friend, by joining this church, you will become jointly responsible for whether or not this congregation continues to faithfully proclaim the gospel. That means you will become jointly responsible both for what this church teaches, as well as whether or not its members’ lives remain faithful. And one day you will stand before God and give an account for how you used this authority. Will you sit back and stay anonymous, doing little more than passively showing up for 75 minutes on Sundays? Or will you jump in with the hard and rewarding work of studying the gospel, building relationships, and making disciples? We need more hands for the harvest, so we hope you’ll join us in that work.

When God created Adam, he set apart sacred space in which he would enter into fellowship with his newly created image bearer. Just as He had created time and space (Gen. 1:1-2), setting apart a portion of that time to be sacred unto Him, so the Lord set apart a portion of sacred space in which man would worship Him. While the story arc of Scripture is that of man’s fall from fellowship with God and of his great rebellion against the God who had created him for fellowship with Himself, the climax is the restoration of man to fellowship with Himself in the New Heavens and the New Earth–the renewed Garden paradise from which Adam was exiled. Consider the six following thoughts on the importance of sacred space in the Scriptures:

1. The Garden was the place of God’s special blessing…

2. The Garden was a reflection of Heaven…

3. The Garden was to be Extended…

4. The Garden was to be Populated…

5. The Garden was to be Cultivated…

6. The Garden was to be Protected…

While God originally set apart the Garden of Eden for man to live with Him in unbroken fellowship and communion, His plan was that everything should be Garden. That is the picture we get at the end of the Bible. The Book of Revelation paints the picture for us of the whole earth being populated with redeemed humanity. The Tree of Life is present there, with its leaves for the healing of the nations. The church of God is a fruitful Garden in which God will dwell for all eternity. The New Heavens and the New Earth will be full of righteousness and peace and joy. It will be a place of blessing. A sacred space for all of eternity.

Among the diverse and manifold truths revealed in the Genesis account of Creation, we discover that God set apart two spheres of worship–sacred time and sacred space. Since all that God created was created in time and space, it should stand out to us as a matter of supreme importance that He then set apart a certain portion of that time and space in which man might worship Him. While the idea of sacred space surfaces in the account of God’s planting of the Garden of Eden–the prototypical Temple from which all the other sacred spaces from Creation to New Creation in Scripture take form–sacred time is first discovered when God set aside one day in seven for His image bearers to come together to worship Him. As Iain D. Campbell has so helpfully pointed out, “As God gave man sacred space in Paradise, and sacred time in his weekly cycle, he gave him a constant reminder of what he had made him for.” The idea of sacred time is one of the most significant–and yet, one of the least understood and embraced–needs of our lives as creatures. The teaching of Scripture as to the usefulness and purpose of the Sabbath Day helps us better joyfully embrace our need for sacred time in our relationship with the Lord. Here are 7 things to remember when approaching this subject:

1. God set apart sacred time for the feeding of the souls of His people…

2. God set apart sacred time in order to help His people, with all their spiritual weaknesses, keep their focus on Him…

3. God set apart sacred time to remind His people that He is the Creator and that they are creatures…

4. God set apart sacred time to gather His people together and remind them of His having separated them from the world for Himself…

5. God set apart sacred time to strengthen and equip His people for their labors throughout the forthcoming week…

6. God set apart sacred time in order to teach His people to cease from their labors and enter into His everlasting rest…

7. God set apart sacred time to help us better see our need for Jesus Christ, who entered into time and labored in agony on the cross to secure that rest for our souls…

Jonathan Edwards summed up the rest-providing nature of Christ’s redemptive work when he wrote:

“Christ’s resting from the work of redemption is expressly spoken of as being parallel with God’s resting from the work of creation. Heb. 4:10, ‘For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.’

Now Christ rested from his works when he rose from the dead, on the first day of the week. When he rose from the dead, then he finished his work of redemption. His humiliation was then at an end: he then rested and was refreshed. — When it is said, ‘There remains a rest to the people of God;’ in the original, it is, a Sabbatism, or the keeping of a Sabbath: and this reason is given for it, ‘For he that entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.'”

Since this may be a new concept for some readers, it is important to consider this a bit further. Was the garden the earth’s first temple? Was the garden a special dwelling place of God among men on the earth? The text of Genesis 2 and 3 does not use those words to describe the garden of Eden. But as we have already seen, it does utilize language used elsewhere in Scripture that describes God’s presence in Israel’s tabernacle. Does the Bible look back upon the garden of Eden and indicate that it was, in fact, a temple, a sanctuary, the first special dwelling place of God on earth among men? I think it does.

Furthermore, I had the opportunity to interview the author about this book. You may listen to the first part of that interview here[part 2 here] or below (we get into Adam and the temple around the 27 minute mark):

Many years ago, I wrote a book that was first titled The Psychology of Atheism, then later retitled If There Is a God, Why Are There Atheists? In it, I included a chapter on the nakedness motif that we find in sacred Scripture and in Western philosophy. I did a word study of gumnos, which is the Greek for “naked.” In the garden of Eden, the man and the woman were naked but without shame until sin came into their lives. The very first psychological self-awareness of guilt and shame was an uncomfortable awareness of nudity. Since then, human beings have been the only creatures who have adorned and covered themselves with artificial garments, because it is built into our fallen humanity to equate shame and humiliation with nakedness.

Throughout the pages of Scripture, when God speaks of bringing judgment against the guilty, He does it by exposing their sin and stripping them of their clothes. A prime example of this comes from the book of the prophet Amos. Amos gives the Lord’s list of transgressions by Moab, Judah, Israel, and so on, then gives God’s response: “Behold, I am weighed down by you, as a cart full of sheaves is weighed down.” This is God’s rebuke of His people. He then says: “Therefore flight shall perish from the swift, the strong shall not strengthen his power, nor shall the mighty deliver himself; he shall not stand who handles the bow, the swift of foot shall not escape.” God was foretelling the conditions when He visited His judgment on His people. Then He says, “The most courageous men of might shall flee naked in that day” (2:13–16). As another example, the book of Revelation connects the judgments of God on the wicked to nakedness (Rev. 3:17;16:15; 17:16).

The motif of clothing and nakedness is at the heart of our understanding of redemption. Our own righteousness, we are told, is like rotten, filthy rags (Isa. 64:6). The only way any of us can stand in God’s presence is to be stripped of those rags and then clothed afresh in the garments of Christ’s righteousness. That is the gospel. You and I can never stand in the presence of a holy God unless we are clothed from on high with a righteousness that is not our own.

God has provided for us a covering for our shame and our nakedness. He has invited us into His redeeming presence to experience anew that sense of safety that we have in knowing His Son has covered our sin with His blood on the cross and covered our nakedness with His perfect righteousness in His life.